


Laudanum Kisses

by WearingOutWinter



Series: Offbeat Femslash AUs [3]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Drinking, Drug Use, F/F, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 01:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8081608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: In the surrealist art scene of interwar Paris, Laura is a painter, Danny is a poet, and Carmilla is their opium-sipping muse.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired both by the RL surrealists' own sapphic romance story of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore and by my compulsion to scatter femslash AUs across European history. I hope you enjoy!

It is just after dawn, and Laura is the only one awake. She stands beside the lone bed in their flat as Paris slowly rouses itself outside. Carmilla lies higher on the pillows, head tilted back, lips slightly parted. The sheets are bunched around her waist, and her breasts rise and fall slowly with each breath. Danny's head lies on Carmilla's shoulder, red hair falling to tumble and tangle with black. One arm is thrown across the dark-haired woman's stomach, and the sheets are caught tight in Danny's long fingers.

Laura steps across the room slowly, mindful of the floorboards and their creaks and groans. A table holds and empty bottle and a three glasses. One of them has a bit wine of left, and Laura downs in a single gulp as she walks to her easel. She removes the tops from her paint jars with one hand as she lights a cigarette with the other.

It's been ten years since the war ended. Ten years since the tide of blood rolled back across Europe and left three refugees gasping and stranded at the high-water mark. Her art has improved in that time. Danny's has as well. And Carmilla's lips have grown ever more purple.

Laura breathes out, sending grey smoke spilling from her lips against the canvas, where it fades and whorls away. She imagines that it is by that action, the transmission of her own life's breath, that she creates her art, the work of hands and brushes mere abstractions. This morning, it all flows so easily.

She paints a portrait of her lovers. She paints a landscape of a city. Folds of blankets become rows of dark houses. A leg thrown beyond their confines curls in a pale river, cutting between the streets. Shadowed pools collect in the hollow of throats, breasts rise in gilded domes. One is crowned in rubies in the outline of teeth.

She paints a portrait of a city. She paints a landscape of her lovers. But then she reaches the Danny's hair, and the scene changes. Laura's breath hitches, the spill of smoke stuttering for a moment. Then her brush moves again, and on her canvas, the spires and domes are crowned by flame. But the fire does not linger in the high places: it sweeps the streets and the alleys, leaps the milky river. In the squares and in the markets, tiny figures dance and writhe and caper.

If Danny's hair is fire, then Carmilla's is soot, choking and smothering. Laura reaches out to paint an ash-stained sky, but hesitates, her eyes fixed on the dark-haired woman's purple lips. Lips, she realizes, the color of a bruised twilight. Of night falling at the end of the world.

It is well and truly day by the time she is finished. Danny stirs, and countless cigarettes lie cold and dead around Laura's feet. On the canvas, a city in the shape of two women is consumed by fire, breasts and hips and limbs all tangled, all burning. One of the city-women has her head thrown back, vomiting the night sky from opium-stained lips. It is far more grotesque than it is beautiful, and Laura smiles as she sets her brushes aside.

Because there is an honesty in grotesquerie, a truth missing from all the pleasant pieces that hang in galleries and earn the approval of critics. It is the shape of dreams and of nightmares, more real than reality, emblazoned on canvas or distilled in verse. On good days, it all comes so easily, bubbling up like blood from chlorine-soaked lungs.

Her reverie ends as Danny climbs from the bed, disentangling her limbs from Carmilla's with care. Laura beckons the taller woman over with a whisper.

“Look,” she says, smiling. “I painted you.”

 


End file.
